Big Pond to Myton Gully project to commence before year end

This was disclosed Wednesday during a community information meeting on the project organized by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) and hosted by the Old Harbour Baptist Church.

“So we are looking to start around the end of December. I am not sure what date just yet… but certainly for me within the next two weeks max,” said Tammoyia Miller, social officer at JSIF.

Major expansion will be conducted in phase one of the project between the communities of Claremont Heights and Old Harbour Villa at a cost of J$248 million. This will see the Myton Gully bridge being replaced with a modern structure to accommodate a freer flow of vehicular traffic.

Timeline of the project is 12 months. The contractor is Contraxx Enterprises Limited.

• US$8m ‘risk reduction’ for Big Pond-Myton Gully improvement project

Garey Duncan, project engineer, JSIF, says the realignment of the channel will be able to accommodate a one to 100 year return in rainfall capacity that will significantly reduce the possibility of flooding. In engineering language, this means that the gully will be designed to hold the highest average amount of rainfall recorded in the last century.

Phase Two of the US$8 million project, which is being funded by a loan from the World Bank, sees improvement works being performed from Myton Gully proper through to Frazer’s Gully in Old Harbour Bay based on information gleaned from the disclosure document made public on the JSIF website.

The final phase will then be executed from Claremont to Big Pond. A timeline for the next two phases is yet to be determined.

Big Pond, a natural sinkhole of nature, is a major flood prone area in northern Old Harbour particularly during the rainy season.

Present at the meeting were members of the community and elected councillors Mark O’Connor, Keith Knight and Steve Graham – all members of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

One of the key points raised in the near two-hour summit is the potential inconvenience to the motoring public while work is being done on the narrow Myton Gully bridge.

But Duncan assured residents that all the potential hazards have been taken into account to mitigate delays in travel time.

“There will be a detour road to ensure that traffic moves along. So you not going to have the same issues like you having with the current bridge. So a truck and a car can pass through at the same time,” Duncan said. “After the detour road is built we will demolish the old bridge and build a four-cell box culvert.”

For those impacted most, yesterday’s announcement represents a collective sigh of exasperating relief. For more than 30 years their lives and properties have been at the mercy of murky torrents of flood waters from Big Pond. There have been plenty talks too over those decades promising a permanent solution but nothing noteworthy until when the first community consultation meeting was held at Davis Primary School in January 2019.

Since that meeting three years ago, JSIF, the state’s leading project implementation agency under the Office of the Prime Minister, conducted an assessment on the environmental and social impacts of the planned works with agreements established with persons directly affected.

As for those persons seeking employment, both skilled and unskilled labour will be drawn from the community, but data on the required labour force was not available for the meeting.